The Annual Golf Cart Checklist for a Central Texas Cart

September 15, 2026

A golf cart in Central Texas does not need much, and what it does need is mostly free. The paid part is diagnosis. Here is the whole annual list, in order of how much money each item saves, written so you can do the parts you want to do yourself.

The right time is late winter or early spring, before the heat and before the season.

1. Water the batteries properly (free, saves the most)

If you have flooded lead-acid batteries, this is the single highest-value maintenance task in cart ownership here, and it is the one most often skipped.

• Charge the pack fully first, then water. Watering a discharged battery and then charging it makes it overflow.
• Distilled water only. Tap water introduces minerals that shorten battery life.
• Fill to just over the plates, not to the top of the filler neck. Leave room for the electrolyte to expand during charging.
• Every two to four weeks in summer. Georgetown heat drives water out fast, and a plate that has been exposed to air is permanently damaged.

A pack that gets this reaches four to six years. A pack that does not gets three. That difference is well over a thousand dollars.

2. Clean and check the terminals (free)

Corrosion at a battery terminal is resistance, and resistance in a several-hundred-amp circuit means heat, voltage drop, and hard starting under load. Green or white crust, or green powder visible under cable insulation, needs attention.

Disconnect carefully, clean the posts and lugs, reassemble, and torque properly. While you are in there, wiggle each cable at the lug: anything that moves is a future cut-out while driving.

3. Check tire pressure and sidewalls (free)

Cold, with a gauge, all four. Carts are routinely run ten or more PSI low, which costs range and wears the tire edges.

While you are down there, look at the sidewalls in good light. Fine cracking or crazing means the rubber has aged out, and in Central Texas sun that happens long before the tread wears out. A tire with plenty of tread and a crazed sidewall is finished. Tires are $75–$150 each installed.

4. Do the roll test (free, two minutes)

Put the tow/run switch in TOW and push the cart on level ground. It should roll with modest effort. If it fights you, a brake is dragging.

A dragging brake is sneaky: it does not squeal, it does not pull, it just quietly wears itself out and costs you range. Plenty of “I think I need batteries” calls are a dragging brake. Feel each wheel after a short drive too; a hot one confirms which corner.

5. Test the parking brake on a slope (free)

It should hold the cart firmly with no creep. Any creep means shoes, cables, or the latch, and on a cart parked on a driveway with a grade that is a genuine safety item. A $75 adjustment is usually all it takes if caught before the shoes are through.

6. Watch a full charge cycle (free)

Plug in an empty-ish cart and pay attention. A healthy charger starts, runs through its cycle, and shuts off or drops to a maintenance state. A charger that never shuts off, or shuts off after an hour, is not fully charging the pack, and an undercharged pack behaves exactly like a dying one.

While you are there, look at the charge port. Discolouration, melted plastic, or a pin pushed back means the port is failing, and that is $100–$300 rather than a pack.

7. Load test each battery (this is the paid part)

Pack voltage on a meter tells you almost nothing. A tired battery reads a healthy voltage at rest and collapses under load, because what it has lost is the ability to deliver current.

A proper load test puts each battery under load individually and records how far it sags and how fast it recovers. Six numbers rather than one. That is what tells you whether you have one failing battery dragging five healthy ones, which on a young pack can sometimes be fixed for the price of one battery, or a uniformly tired pack.

This is what the $50–$100 service call and the annual tune-up at $100–$200 actually buy, and it is the only item on this list you cannot reasonably do at home.

8. Check the lights, horn, and mirrors (free)

If the cart ever leaves your own street, this matters both legally and practically. The Texas street legal page covers what the statute contemplates for road-legal operation and what a golf cart licence plate is.

9. Make the summer plan (free, saves the second most)

This is the item unique to our climate, and it is the one that produces the September calls.

If the cart will sit while you travel:

• Leave it on a maintaining charger if the garage has power. This is the whole answer for most owners.
• If not, charge fully, water properly, and check it monthly if anyone can.
• Water before you leave, not after you get back. Watering a pack that has already run dry is repair, not maintenance.
• A lithium cart is different: store at a partial state of charge and use the disconnect if it has one. Do not apply lead-acid habits to lithium or the reverse.

A lead-acid pack left at partial charge in a Georgetown garage through July and August sulphates, and that capacity does not come back. The sat all summer page explains what is recoverable and what is not.

What it costs to have done

An electric tune-up is $100–$200 and a gas tune-up is $150–$300, done in your driveway. If you want the free items done yourself and only the load test performed, say so when you book; that is a perfectly sensible way to use a service call, and the call is applied toward any repair that comes out of it.

We service carts at home across Georgetown, Sun City Texas, Liberty Hill, Leander, Cedar Park, Round Rock, Hutto, and Jarrell.